I recently trekked up north to Bigfoot Country. This prompted Genie Scott to request that if I should encounter Bigfoot, "Get an interview for my talk!"
I traveled the Bigfoot Highway, visited Bluff Creek where the infamous Patterson-Gimlinfootage was filmed, and stopped by the Willow Creek - China Flat Museum, a center dedicated to local history, and Bigfoot lore.
Unfortunately for Genie's talk, and cryptozoologist's worldwide, I encountered some fascinating anecdotal evidence, but I didn't encounter any historical evidence, or Bigfoot...
California claims more Bigfoot sightings than anywhere else in the world. (Other cultures have different variants, such as the Yowie of my native Australia.) But does Bigfoot call the San Francisco Bay Area "home"?
Like the USGS earthquake map, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) have a Bigfoot map that pinpoints sightings reported throughout the country. According to this database, Big

It appears that a new movie is being launched, "Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie", though it is not at this writing being shown in the Bay Area. It concerns the efforts of two Ohio men, friends, who are convinced that Bigfoot lives in the wilds of Ohio
.Bigfoot Movie
The New York Times says, "the film???s main emphasis is on depicting the everyday lives of regular, financially struggling folk who just happen to have an unusual hobby" and that the evidence of the two men is not "convincing enough to sway the opinions of skeptics, but that isn???t really the aim of this documentary. The Times review is at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/movies/17bigf.html?ref=movies. The film's website is http://www.notyourtypicalbigfootmovie.com/, and another review of the movie can be found at the Salon site, at

I was recently invited to give a presentation at "Ask a Scientist", which I am looking forward to. As a physical anthropologist, I have long been fascinated by Bigfoot, Yeti, and other alleged relic primates living in remote locations.
I would absolutely LOVE it if someone actually found a Yeti, or a Bigfoot. What could possibly be more exciting to a scientist than the discovery that indeed, populations of large-bodied primates, unknown to science, actually existed somewhere? What would be the relationship of these creatures to other primates, or humans? What physical anthropologist wouldn't be itching to look at the morphology, the genetics, the DNA?
Alas, one does science with the head, not the heart. As much as I'd love to believe the existence of "wild men of the forest" as these creatures collectively are called, I won't believe it without evidence.
As my former professor, Neil Tappen, once remarked, he'd "love to go on the SECOND Bigfoot expedition" -- the one held after the first succes

East Bay Skeptics Dinner: Berkeley

WHAT: Meet for dinner and discussion. Sometimes there is a topic and sometimes there is just open discussion of whatever is on people’s minds. Ordering dinner starts at 6pm, discussion starts after eating is finished.

SkepTalk: Berkeley

Nicholas Dufour

WHAT: Deepfakes, GANs and Visual Misinformation
The rise of Deepfakes has prompted intense coverage in the press, concern from government officials, and fear among the public. Deepfakes, along with GANs (generative adversarial networks), are a class of “generative” neural networks capable of creating highly realistic synthetic images. The widespread availability of open-source Deepfake tools means anyone with access to a computer can potentially create photorealistic fake videos and images. These fakes can, for instance, portray high-profile individuals in arbitrary–possibly compromising–situations. Because of their wide availability, relative ease of use, and harm potential, the technology has been the subject of considerable scrutiny and debate.

In this talk, we’ll discuss the current state of AI-generated imagery, including Deepfakes and GANs: how they work, their capabilities, and what the future may hold. We’ll try to separate the hype from reality, and examine the social consequences of these technologies with a special focus on the effect that the idea of Deepfakes has had on the public. We’ll consider the visual misinformation landscape more broadly, including so-called “shallowfakes” and “cheapfakes” like Photoshop. Finally, we’ll review the challenges and promise of the global research community that has emerged around detecting visual misinformation.

WHO: Nick Dufour is a Senior Software Engineer at Google Research, and a member of the team overseeing research into Deepfakes and visual misinformation. Nick joined Google in 2016 following his graduate work in Machine Learning at Stanford University.